THE QUESTION IS INEVITABLE BUT POINTLESS

Outside the Today show, among the people dressed as cheese wedges and maple
trees, stands a man dressed as a quahog with a sign that says: ``Hi, Matt.
I'm running for Senate from Rhode Island and I've shot, snorted, and smoked
every illegal pharmaceutical known to man or animal.''

After yesterday, it might get to that. After the engaging Matt Lauer
claimed a place in the Rhode Island Senate race with one of those perfectly
paced interviews of his, the contest to succeed John Chafee could turn into
a costume party.

And why not? Since Warwick Mayor and Senate candidate Lincoln Chafee was
asked on Channel 10 the pointless question about his past drug use, the
campaign has been turned toward such shallow, meaningless territory that a
walking quahog with a drug habit might seem a natural.

This is the wasteland, where real ideas are pushed aside in favor of the
easy quick hit. Drug use is the all-purpose taking-off-the-gloves question.
The only problem is, it bounces back and forth between television and
newspaper reporters while barely touching the viewers and readers.

Last year, Atty. Gen. Sheldon Whitehouse, then a candidate, was asked the
question about past drug use. He handled it so ineptly that it became an
issue less for its substance than for his bumbling response. But come
Election Day, he wiped out his opponent.

There was a message in Whitehouse's victory: Voters don't really care much
about drug use from long ago.

But the message apparently didn't get through. The question has been
dragged out yet again, all beat up and sure to divert attention from things
that matter.

As Scott MacKay, The Journal's fine political reporter, points out, there
has never been a large demonstration of voters demanding to know when a
candidate smoked a joint. (BR)(BR)

The probe into a candidate's drug history has become, instead, an exercise
for the press -- a cheap and empty way of looking tough.

Ever since Texas governor and presidential hopeful George W. Bush crumbled
in his resolve to keep the question off limits, the press has been hot on
the trail of past snorts and tokes.

Mayor Chafee said he could understand Governor Bush's position when Bush
said, ``When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible.''

As were we all, for varying numbers of years.

The question about past drug use is really about whether a candidate has
lived a normal life -- whether he or she passed through the usual minefield
of alluring choices or decided, instead, to abstain from everything that
felt good.

Reporters know that. We've passed through the minefield. Trying to turn a
very familiar experience into a test of character is silly and unfair.

Lincoln Chafee, meanwhile, seems to have made the most of his time in the
ever-shifting drug spotlight. He answered the question on Channel 10 last
weekend by admitting to marijuana and cocaine use while a student at Brown,
in the mid-1970s. And, despite sharing the screen with the motor-mouthed
governor of New Mexico yesterday, he responded to the trend-seeking Matt
Lauer with what seemed a comfortable openness about his admissions.

Also, in an interview this week with The Journal's M. Charles Bakst, Chafee
had the good sense to say that decriminalizing drug use is something that
bears consideration.

Now that's a real question. With the war on drugs such an abysmal failure,
the idea of decriminalizing illegal drugs in order to gain some control is
something that candidates for national office should be asked about --
along with health care, Social Security, the poor, taxes, the environment .
. .